"Like many people on the Internet, I use Google so many times daily that I hardly remember a time..."

“Like many people on the Internet, I use Google so many times daily that I hardly remember a time without it… Recently, I had a similar realization while using Google Scholar to search the medical literature. Potentially, Google Scholar can instantly direct you to the most important papers in any field anywhere you can access the Internet, and many of these papers are now available online. I use it at least several times weekly and sometimes daily… A seventy year old woman with neurofibromatosis came to me with severe hypertension. I was initially concerned that she had a pheochromocytoma, which is associated with neurofibromatosis. To look for other associations, I searched [“hypertension and neurofibromatosis”] in Google Scholar, which revealed that renal artery stenosis from vascular neurofibromas was also possible. We looked, and that’s what she had… A second patient was referred to me complaining that he had stopped sweating three months ago. I’d never seen anything like this before. So I searched Google Scholar, which quickly directed me to the literature on acquired idiopathic generalized anhydrosis, a rare neurologic disorder. I sent him to a neurologist for a skin biopsy, and this confirmed the diagnosis.”

- Google 2006 Annual Report

Posted on infosnack.